Maria Sibylla Merian was a German artist and scientist who
travelled to Surinam in South America and painted the animals and
plants found there. She was unusual as it was mostly men who
recorded these exciting new species.

Before the invention of photography, paintings and drawings were
the only way that Europeans could see how animals behaved in the
wild in the Americas without travelling across the Atlantic Ocean
themselves. This picture shows two animals that could be dangerous
- a caiman and a false coral snake - that people in Europe would
never have seen before.